Notes to this edition This is an electronic edition of the printed book. Minor corrections may have been made within the text; new information and any errata appear on the current page only. China Research Monograph 72 The Cross-Cultural Legacy of Lin Yutang: Critical Perspectives Qian Suoqiao, editor ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-172-1 (electronic) ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-169-1 (print) ISBN-10: 1-55729-1691 (print) Please visit the IEAS Publications website at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/publications/ for more information and to see our catalogue. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94704-2318 USA [email protected] February 2016 The Cross-Cultural Legacy of Lin Yutang CHINA RESEARCH MONOGRAPH 72 CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES The Cross-Cultural Legacy of Lin Yutang Critical Perspectives Edited by Qian Suoqiao A publication of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Although the institute is responsible for the selection and acceptance of manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the accuracy of statements rests with their authors. The China Research Monograph series is one of several publication series sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The others include the Japan Research Monograph series, the Korea Research Monograph series, and the Research Papers and Policy Studies series. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94720 [email protected] Library of Congress Control Number: 2015957332 ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-169-1 ISBN-10: 1-55729-169-1 Copyright © 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cover image: Photograph by Qian Suoqiao of a newspaper clipping in the Lin Yutang House archives in Taipei. Credit line reads: Drawing by John Clymer; photograph © Davart. Cover design by Mindy Chen. Contents Contributors vii Introduction. Western Universalism and Chinese Identity: Lin Yutang as a Cross-Cultural Critic 1 Qian Suoqiao PART I. TRADITION AND RELIGION: AN ALTERNATIVE INTELLECTUAL PATH 1 On Lin Yutang: Between Revolution and Nostalgia 19 Chih-ping Chou 2 Lin Yutang’s Unique Adoption of Tradition 38 Charles Laughlin 3 A Bundle of Contradictions: Lin Yutang’s Relationship to Christianity 49 Yang Liu PART II. LANGUAGE AND LAW: CULTURE AND POLITICS IN THE 1920s AND 1930s 4 Lin Yutang and the National Language Movement in Modern China 67 Peng Chunling (translated by Wang Lu and Fang Lu) 5 The “Fair Society” (Pingshe) in the Diaries of Lin Yutang and Hu Shi 95 Chen Zishan (translated by Richard Sheung) PART III. CROSS-CULTURAL TRAVELS BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WEST 6 Lin Yutang’s Criticism of Criticism of Criticism: On Self-Expression in China and America 115 Diran John Sohigian 7 Collaborator or Cannibal? Montaigne’s Role in Lin Yutang’s Importance of Living 143 Rivi Handler-Spitz 8 The Genesis and Reception of My Country and My People 162 Qian Suoqiao PART IV. INTERPRETING CHINA AND CHINESE IN AMERICA 9 His Country and His Language: Lin Yutang and the Interpretation of Things Chinese 185 Joe Sample 10 Reconstructing the Image of a Chinese Courtesan for Western Readers: Lin Yutang’s Miss Tu and His Cross-Cultural Rewriting Strategies 201 Fang Lu 11 The Several Worlds of Lin Yutang’s Gastronomy 232 Charles W. Hayford Index 253 Contributors Chen Zishan陈子善 is professor of Chinese and director of the Center for Modern Chinese Literary Archives and Research at East China Normal University. He has been a visiting scholar at Kyoto University, the Uni- versity of Cambridge, and Harvard University. He is the author of many books, such as Wenren shi 文人事 (Writers’ anecdotes) and Shuobujin de Zhang Ailing说不尽的张爱玲 (Discourses on Zhang Ailing). He is also the editor of Lin Yutang shuhua林语堂书话 (A collection of Lin Yutang’s essays related to books and reading), as well as the editor of collections of works of many modern Chinese writers, including Zhou Zuoren, Yu Dafu, Liang Shiqiu, Tai Jingnong, Shi Zhicun, Ye Lingfeng, and Zhang Ailing. Chih-ping Chou 周质平 is professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University and specializes in modern Chinese intellectual history and late-Ming literature. He received his B.A. from Soochow University in 1970, his M.A. from Tunghai University in 1974, and his Ph.D. from In- diana University in 1982. His publications include Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge University Press, 1988); A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit: The Half-Century Romance of Hu Shi and Edith Clifford Williams (co-authored with Susan Chan Egan, Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2009); Gonganpai de wenxue piping jiqi fazhan公安派的文学批评及其 发展 (Literary criticism and its development of the Gongan school; Taipei: Shangwu, 1986); Hu Shi yu Lu Xun 胡适与鲁迅 (Hu Shi and Lu Xun; Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1988); Xiandai renwu yu sichao 现代人物与思潮 (Studies on modern Chinese intellectual history; Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 2003); Hu Shi de qingyuan yu wanjing胡适的情缘与晚境 (Hu Shi’s romance and his late years; Anhui: Huangshan shushe, 2008); and Guangyan bu xi: Hu Shi sixi- ang yu xiandai Zhongguo光焰不熄: 胡适思想与现代中国 (Hu Shi and mod- ern China; Beijing: Jiuzhou Press, 2012); Xiandai renwu yu wenhua fansi现 代人物与文化反思 (Modern Chinese intellectuals and their cultural reflec- tions; Beijing: Jiuzhou Press, 2013). viii Contributors Rivi Handler-Spitz is assistant professor of Chinese at Macalester Col- lege in St. Paul, Minnesota. Having completed her Ph.D. in Chinese and French comparative literature at the University of Chicago in 2009, she received a postdoctoral fellowship in classics and international humani- ties at Brown University’s Cogut Center for the Humanities in 2010. Her interests include the history of reading, the history and theory of the es- say and autobiography, the history of the self, and East-West comparative studies. Her forthcoming book, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden), coedited with Pauline Lee and Haun Saussy (Columbia University Press, 2016), marks the first large-scale translation of essays by the late-Ming radical intellectual Li Zhi into any Western language. She is also at work on a monograph tentatively titled Symptoms of an Unruly Age: Li Zhi and Cultural Manifestations of Early Modernity, which examines the significance of Li Zhi’s use of rhetoric in the contexts of early modern social, material, literary, and intellectual history. Charles W. Hayford is a historian of modern China. Since taking his Ph.D. in history and East Asian languages from Harvard in 1973, his interests have run to cultural relations across the Pacific. He has taught at Harvard University, Oberlin College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, North- western University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Colorado College, Univer- sity of Iowa, and Harvard Summer School. From 2006 to 2012 he was edi- tor of the Journal of American–East Asian Relations. His publications include To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) and China, World Bibliography Series 35 (Oxford: CLIO Press, 1996), as well as many articles, including “Open Recipes, Openly Arrived At: How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (1945) and the Translation of Chinese Food,” Journal of Oriental Studies 45, nos. 1 and 2 (2012); “China by the Book: China Hands and China Stories, 1848–1948,” Journal of American– East Asian Relations 16, no. 4 (Winter 2009); and “Who’s Afraid of Chop Suey?,” Education about Asia 16, no. 3 (2011). His long-term book project, titled America’s Chinas: From the Opium Wars to the Twenty-first Century, looks at how Americans who lived in China wrote for the folks back home and presented a moral discourse on civilization and modernity. Charles Laughlin has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese language and litera- ture from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Arts, Master of Phi- losophy, and Ph.D in Chinese literature from Columbia University, and is currently Weedon Chair Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. He has published extensively on Chinese literature from the 1920s to the 1960s, including two books: Chinese Reportage: The Aesthetics